Nashauna Drummond, Staff Reporter
Try this more formal setting for your Christmas dinner table. Get out your fine china, silverware and crystal and indulge in a lavish centrepiece to complete the effect.
CONTRARY TO popular belief I'm pretty much a loner. I like spending time with me. I always say if I can't enjoy my own company how do I expect others to? However at the end of each year, I have a struggle for this highly sought-after commodity, time by myself.
By the first week of December, I get anxious as I can feel it coming on. The signs are everywhere. You see the shrubs being cleared and almost every building boasts a new coat of paint. You can actually feel it in the air and I can feel it in my bones. The cool cool 'Christmas breeze' constantly lashing against my cheeks as I try to contain myself.
I hate Christmas time. I'm no scrooge (not really). But the family, the excitement is just not for me. Don't' get me wrong, I love my family, and if you mess with them any other day of the year, you'll have to answer to me. But at Christmas they are just too much.
A WORLD OF CHAOS
My grandmother has 10 children. Now eight of them have at least two children and these children have children. You see what I'm getting at? Dozens of very loud persons disagreeing and laughing about any and everything. Dozens of children running around the place creating a mess, while frantic parents shout and scream at them.
Now who wouldn't want to get away from that? As for the kitchen, that's a world of chaos. All five aunties debating about what's the right way to boil water and whose doing it like mama did, and then somehow the uncles get involved in this too - don't ask me how. It's just total pandemonium and I'm sorry I want no part of it and that's why I hate Christmas, and everything associated with it including those annoying carols that your ears just cannot escape.
So every Christmas I try with much success to stay away from them all. I know Christmas is supposed to be family time, but not for me. With all the craziness associated with the season on the road and in the media, shopping malls, people spending what they don't have etc ... etc ... I yearn more than anything to have some "me" time.
